Strengthening Affective Organizational Commitment

Abstract

This study investigates the relationship between cynicism, the perceived fairness of change management and personnel practices, and affective organizational commitment. High levels of affective organizational commitment have been shown to reduce voluntary turnover in the nursing workforce. Previous research suggests that "unfair" management practices and employee cynicism lead to lower commitment. It is not clear, however, whether the perceived fairness of particular practices influences affective commitment beyond that accounted for by underlying employee cynicism. Data were obtained from a study involving 1104 registered nurses that formed part of a larger investigation of the general well-being of nurses in Western Australia. Only nurses who were permanent or employed on fixed term or temporary contracts were included. Findings indicated that although higher levels of cynicism among nurses were associated with lower levels of affective commitment, their perception of the fairness of change management and personnel practices influenced their affective commitment over and above their cynicism. The perceived fairness of management practices is an important influence on nurses' affective commitment beyond that accounted for by cynicism. The implication for managers is that the affective organizational commitment of nurses is likely to be strengthened by addressing the perceived fairness of change management and personnel practices notwithstanding their beliefs about the integrity of the organization.

The Negative Impact of Organizational Cynicism on Physicians and Nurses

“…21 Because nurses have transferable skills, it is logical that continuance commitment does not play a significant role in the models. Our findings mirror results from other work settings: outside of healthcare, several studies have shown that high OCy is related to low organizational commitment; 7,9,22 one study found that cynicism predicts 45% of the variability in organizational commitment. 8 …”

“…English and Chalon (2011) studied 1,104 registered nurses in Western Australia and found that high OCy was associated with lower levels of work commitment. 9 Leiter and Maslach (2009) studied the relationship between burnout and intent to turnover in a sample of 667 Canadian nurses. They operationalized burnout along three continuums: exhaustion-energy, cynicism-involvement and inefficacy-efficacy.…”

“…9 Organizational Commitment (OCo) refers to employees’ attachment to the organization and is conceived of as a multifaceted psychological state. The most widely accepted theory of commitment is a three-component model consisting of three dimensions: affective, continuance, and normative.…”

Practice patterns and organizational commitment of inpatient nurse practitioners

“…The mean organizational commitment score of 4.6 indicated moderate organizational commitment for the participants. Organizational commitment at moderate levels reflects the uncertainty of job status, work overload, and feeling of unappreciation (English & Chalon, 2011;Liou & Cheng, 2010). A moderate level of organizational commitment can indirectly affect the financial success or failure of an institution and the quality of patient care (Idel et al, 2003;Meyer et al, 2002).…”

Effects of organisational restructuring of hospitals on nurses

“…The general attitude of the nurses towards organisational change, despite these problems and inconveniences, has been moderate, but their attitude towards change is not as positive as would be desired because their score indicates slightly below the average. Besides, when the ATCS subdimensions are analysed, nurses got the highest score from re- For a successful change process, special attention needs to be paid to personnel management (Kuokkanen et al, 2007), fairness needs to be ensured in change and personnel practices (English & Chalon, 2011), and there should be awareness that cynicism may increase due to the increasing workload and stress brought by change (Nguyen et al, 2018). When cynicism is reduced or eliminated in organisations, the commitment and participation of employees to the organisation increase (Grama & Todericiu, 2016).…”